I pop a One-A-Day with my lunch every day but I was wondering whether there are scientific studies about the efficacy of multi-vitamin pills. How much do they help the body get those daily requirements? I do try to eat fruits and vegetables as well but probably a little less than I should.
If you eat a well-balanced diet you shouldn’t need any vitamin supplementation. If your diet tends to be less than well-balanced, a supplement with a general multi-vitamin should be all that’s needed to supply the missing substances. In general they meet and exceed the minimum RDA set by the FDA.
Damn - I had an excellent site! can’t find it
I’m like a borderline expert on this though:
best way to get vitamins is via eating it in foods, but recent research shows that long term tests of people taking multivitamins has some anit aging benefits, specifically by helping cells fight damage from free radicals.
However, there is a sgood amount of evidence that shows that comsuming food for nutrition is best especially when done in very low calorie meals dense in nutrition…such as eating 1500 cals a day while getting 100% recommended daily allowances and sufficient protein.
Vitamin popping is good, but a distant second.
here is a very respected doc in his field with some scientific studies…a biosphere guy…from UCLA
Another question-
Could taking multivitamins slightly bad for you?
I take “one a day” pills and many of the vitamins/minerals are present in quantities thousands of times the RDA. For example here’s some sample quantities:
Thiamin (B-1) 2000% RDA
Riboflavin (B-2) 1765% RDA
B-12 500% RDA
I know for a fact that iron is bad in huge quantities, but what about these vitamins? Especially if they fat-soluble, I would think they would accumulate over time.
Which “one-a-day” do you take? Mine has just 80%,100% and 300% resp. for the three that you cite.
I was myself a little worried about too much Vitamin C since I tend to drink quite a bit of fruit juice but I doubt I come close to a harmful amount.
The one concern about exceeding the RDA is that some vitamins/minerals compete for space on the same carrier molecules going into the cell, so having too much of one thing might make it hard for you to absorb something else. But to the best of my knowledge, that’s just not a huge risk.
You should be concerned about megadosing on the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, and K). Especially A and D. There have been numerous cases of toxic effects from A and D; however, a multivitamin pill once a day will not greatly exceed, if at all, the RDA. And you have to megadose for a long time. The water soluble vitamins do not accumulate in the body; they get washed out. So you don’t have to worry about excessive amounts. I take megadoses of C every morning, powder C, and put it in my OJ. Linus Pauling took 20 grams a day, and the person who isolated this vitamin also took about 20 grams a day.
If you take a vitamin B supplement, you should supplement all the B vitamins in the same ratio. Do not take separate B-6, for example, but take a tablet that contains them all. An excess of one may impede the utilization of the others. (There are about 10 different B vitamins.)
barb, why do you take megadoses of C? And Linus Pauling - isn’t he dead?
Pardon a slight hijack, but it’s related to multi-vitamin: has anybody here used Myoplex or other supplemental shakes, and do you recommend them?
There are a large variety of supplemental shakes, and a number of reasons why one might be taking them. Did you have a specific one in mind, or a specific reason for wanting to take them?
Myoplex. I’m overweight, out-of-shape, and about to enter a new diet-exercise program.
I can’t find any specific info on the shake, but (judging from the name) I assume that it’s one of the many pre-made protein shakes out there. It’s probably OK when taken as part of a balanced diet, but you could probably make your own cheaper. Your call.
Thanks, ultrafilter.
Making my own hadn’t even occurred to me; I’ll look into that.
[/hijack]
One more OT post:
For my protein shakes, I use skim milk and whey protein. Whey protein is dirt cheap (but not if you go through GNC), and skim milk ain’t too bad either. And sure, I could get more protein if I used whole milk, but I get enough in the rest of my diet that I’m not too worried about it.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
Where else can you buy whey protein? We have a GNC in town, so that’s where I buy it - I’d love to get it cheaper.
There are a number of places online that’ll sell it you. I get mine from The Vitamin Shoppe for roughly $10/pound. IIRC, GNC had it for about $16/pound (their website doesn’t list prices, so I can’t check). I think I found comparable or slightly lower prices at other vendors online, but chose TVS cause they’re about 15 minutes away.
A google search for “whey protein wholesale” brings up a few sites, including
http://www.nextgenproteins.com/products/index.asp?source=adwords
where it’s $28 for 5 lbs. I don’t know anything about brand names (or for that matter, exactly what whey protein is, but I intend to find out).
My general impression from the first couple of replies (and previously) is that vitamin pills do give some valuable nutrients but not necesssarily as much as advertised. So if it says 100% RDA of something it doesn’t mean that the body will absord all of it because the body is better at absorbing from real food. Is this correct? And if so how much,roughly , do we get from vitamin pills. 30% of what’s advertised? 50%? 80%? I know there won’t be a precise answer and it might vary from one vitamin to another but could someone give me a rough answer?
B-1 has no known fatal dose and no known dose with serious toxicity.
B-2 has no known fatal dose and no known dose with serious toxicity.
B-12 has no known fatal dose. It is a water-soluble vitamin described as lacking in toxicity, even in very high intakes.
Source:
Linus Pauling, Ph.D., How to Live Longer and Feel Better. 1986.
Well, we all die sometime. Pauling died in his 90s as did Svent-Gyorgi (sp?), the guy who isolated the vitamin. I take megadoses for the same reasons they did. About 25 years ago, I was vacationing in Mexico and caught a cold. Mexico had a record-breaking cold snap. I got some C at the drugstore and it saved my vacation. My severe symptoms disappeared.
For all those years until very recently the medical establishment said that Pauling was off base. It said that the studies described in his first book were not controlled. Pauling, in his second book, said they were controlled. Recent studies do not show that C prevents colds but they indicate that the symptoms, severity, and length are diminished with C. At any rate, I know that it worked for me then and has worked for me since. But once you catch a cold, you have to follow Pauling’s advice: 10 grams every couple of hours. If you take too much, you’ll get diarrhea. In that case, back off (no pun intended). Works for me.
In addition, C is vital for many other reasons. It’s necessary for the formation of collagen and supports the integrity of the cells. If you bruise easily, it may be that you are deficient in that vitamin. Few people get scurvy nowadays (Vitamin C alias is ascorbic acid). Nonethless, that doesn’t mean that most people have the optimal amount in their bodies. I’m not going to summarize Pauling’s works in a few sentences. You will have to read them yourself, but his opinion was that Vitamin C is a misnomer and that it is not a vitamin, but a hormone, which homo sapiens has lost the ability to synthesize. Man is one of only a very few creatures who cannot synthesize C.
Of course C is also an antioxidant. As a runner, I create many free radicals. C, along with other antioxdiants, helps in this regard.